Hello.
My name is Inigo Montoya.
You killed my free time.
Prepare to read.
Greetings, I feel like I know you all!
Last summer, “for some unknown reason,” I had this urge to go googling for Jim McCotter & Dennis Clark and found TerryD’s original blog posting. I thought it was very well written and showed great respect and restraint, considering what could’ve been written about what happened. (My wife and I even visited ECC at the height of the “wisdom has sent out her maidens” craze. We noticed the singers were abnormally good-looking — what’s UP with that, we wondered…)
Anyhow, I was basically saved into GC and served 18 years before the mast in 3 GC locations, visiting at least 10 other GC churches. I volunteered for Invasion ‘85 but was (thankfully) turned down because I was still in school.
I was touched today by Dave Bovenmyer’s Faithwalkers talk about “Dealing With the Hurts of the Past,” and I really related to his feelings of being unappreciated. I’m uniquely gifted. For years I was doing work in the church that the leaders didn’t fully understand or appreciate. For quite some time it was something like cooking a huge meal every week, pouring out my strength while everyone else came and ate everything and left none for me. But God saw. God saw the work that I did that nobody else shared or appeared to care about. “For God is not unjust, so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.” -Hebrews 6:10
God saw, and in due time moved us out of GC to a place where our gifts came alive — now we are serving Him and being fed and provided for. However, I’m still hesitant to move toward the next level of leadership responsibilities in New Church, largely because I have bad memories of GC.
I could write a lot of Really Bad Juvenile Fiction based on my years in GC, and y’know, I just might. Reading this blog has been great therapy, chilling and hilarious all rolled into one. I feel that I’m waking up slowly to find that even though I’ve left GC, the GC hasn’t left me. Like waking up covered with Taco sauce.
